Staff report
Green Park aldermen recently gave unanimous approval to final development plans for a new fast-food restaurant and a new bank along South Lindbergh Boulevard.
The Board of Aldermen approved final development plans for a Dairy Queen restaurant to be built at 6070 S. Lindbergh Blvd. and a Fifth Third Bank to be constructed at 6080 S. Lindbergh Blvd. The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission had recommended conditional approval of both proposals in early December and aldermen later that month granted conditional approval of preliminary development plans for the Dairy Queen and Fifth Third Bank.
A Dairy Queen representative, Chad Stultz, told aldermen in December that the Green Park Dairy Queen would be modeled after the chain’s Webster Groves location.
The fast-food restaurant would create 62 new jobs, including 25 full-time jobs and 37 part-time jobs, and generate roughly $100,000 in sales-tax revenue. The new Fifth Third Bank will include drive-through services and employ six to eight people, Gerry Weber, architect for Fifth Third Bank, told the Board of Aldermen in December.
Both the Dairy Queen and the Fifth Third Bank are being constructed in the Flori Drive Community Improvement District, or CID, which also includes a new Lion’s Choice restaurant at 6032 S. Lindbergh Blvd. and a new Golden Corral restaurant at 6110 S. Lindbergh Blvd.
The new Lion’s Choice is near the former site of Fantasy Coachworks, which was demolished, as was the nearby original Lion’s Choice restaurant. The project also realigned Yuma and Flori drives at their intersections with Lindbergh Boulevard.
The Board of Aldermen voted in August 2009 to establish the CID. Business situated within the district will charge an additional 1-percent sales tax on purchases.
The additional tax revenue will reimburse the district for public infrastructure improvement costs “including but not limited to landscaping improvements to sidewalks, streets, traffic signs and signals, utilities drainage, water, storm and sewer systems and other site improvements …,” according to the agreement between the city and the Lion’s Choice Redevelopment Corp.
The sales-tax revenue also will reimburse the district for the new, signalized “T” intersection at Flori and South Lindbergh. Aldermen voted unanimously Jan. 17 to adopt a resolution accepting a certificate of substantial completion for the infrastructure improvements for the CID.
City Attorney Paul Rost said, “… The redevelopment plan that the city entered into with Lion’s Choice required that before they could issue any kind of notes or bonds or whatever to pay for the CID, to pay for the infrastructure over there, they had to submit to us … that first they had substantially completed the thing and then second that they would give us a verification of all their costs, that these costs were related to the infrastructure …
“That’s what the thick document is. It’s mainly all of — it is all of their invoices and all the costs and all the things that they spent their money on …” Those costs total roughly $988,882 in construction-related expenditures and nearly $65,000 in administrative costs, according to Rost.
“… They’re complying with our requirement from our development agreement that they would submit all this stuff and that we would then approve it before they went out to get reimbursed,” he added. The 1-percent sales tax will be in effect for 20 years or until the debt is retired.
